RV Travels With Huggy

We usually don't have much snow at all over a winter here in north west Washington State, but the last few days have been very unusual. Yesterday we started out from home about 11am to drive south to my grand daughter's 11th birthday party. It was raining when we left home but as we started up the hill on the freeway south of town we started into mixed snow & rain. A few miles farther, about at the Skagit/Snohomish County line for those familiar with the area, the snow really started sticking on the road as well as alongside the road. A mile or so farther we spotted the first car that had slid off the road. As we approached the Camano Island exit there was close to 4 inches of snow and it was coming down hard. The speed of the traffic was down to about 30mph and it looked like it was getting worse, so we got off the freeway there and turned back. Later we learned that there had been something like 6" of snowfall down at Smokey Point & Marysville that was about 12 miles ahead. I talked with K, my grand daughter, in the evening and we will go take her to lunch the week after next when she is on spring vacation from school.

Back home it was still just raining which actually quit later in the day although it never did warm up very much. When we got up this morning, this is what we had outside our windows:

This is our front yard with the new Thundering Plum tree and the forsythia, both in full bloom, although both with snow on them. You can see the snowflakes falling in the photo. The roads were just slushy but not any problem to drive, although I'll bet that farther south as you get into the so called convergent zone there was a lot more snow (like yesterday.)


This is a telephoto view of the condos on the hill just east of us. This is very unusual weather, especially for "spring."


A photo from the sunroom showing the little fireplace at work, trying to make it warm for the cats. The "flames" are visible here and the heat comes from the bottom of the fireplace. They love it out here but are not fond of cold weather, so we are spending electricity to heat the room. Also notice the hummingbird in the upper part of the window. More about these next.


A closer view of one of the other windows, with a hummingbird in it. Notice all the ice and snow on the pampas grass plant outside the window, and you can still see the snowflakes falling.


A closeup view of the hummingbird in the previous photo. Yes, it did stay there and wait for me to take a closer photo. That is because they are not real birds. Pat found some in a catalog that are split in half. Each half has a magnet attached so that you can put one on each side of a single pane window and they look pretty real. They say they won't work on a double pane insulated window and we haven't tried them on any of those but they work fine on the sunroom windows.


This is a different bird that is on one of the south facing windows. You can see the melted snow drops here as the weather system is coming out of the southwest, but you can also see how the birds are split in half. I used the flash unit to light the bird but it didn't penetrate the tinted window so the outside part is just in silhouette against the brighter sky. These things are fun and if anyone is interested in them I can post where Pat found them.

Our weather is supposed to change for the better after today. I am really getting tired of having winter in springtime. The temperature yesterday never got out of the 30s. This afternoon is supposed to have sunshine but the weather forecasts we get usually come from Seattle, 80 miles south, and it can be different up here in the frigid north. But, we are ready for better weather. Soon, please.

Labels: Birthdays, Grandkids, Griping, Photos, Sunroom, Weather